A Mystery Font That Took Over New York - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/21/nyregion/new-york-storefronts-mystery-font.html <comment><USER2> Almost all the shops in the sign photos are Asian. Because the font simulates brush strokes, it adds an Asian element, since Western writing doesn't use brush strokes.

Brushes may be used in painting letters onto a sign, but only as a tool to fill an area, whereby brush marks are regarded as artifacts to be avoided.

The font doesn't look quirky to someone whose native writing system's canonical form is rooted brush strokes.

Basically this remark in the article nails it:

> _This could have to do with what Choc evokes. For some it bears a > resemblance to the calligraphic forms of Asian writing systems._

But then:

> _However, it's disputed as to whether Choc was a direct homage to these > styles. According to Ms. Chamaret, José Mendoza, Excoffon's assistant at the > time of Choc's production, said that the letterforms were drawn in outlines. > "Never with a brush!" she said._

That hardly counts as an effective dispute. Obviously, the font painstakingly captures the appearance of brush strokes in exactly the same manner that Asian fontographers do in certain fonts. They also don't use brushes, but rather vector graphics: precisely specified outlines or strokes.

Choc is undeniably Asian influenced. Look at the C in Choc; it starts with a little right tick and then reverses. The roman letter C doesn't have anything like that; this is reminiscent of the top stroke in the Japanese こ (ko).

<comment><USER3> Exactly, it's not very mysterious, it looks like kanji and that's why it's used by Asian restaurants. Case solved.

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately they can't publish the GP's (convincing) comment in the New York times.

<comment><USER2> However, I could easily write the sort of twaddle that the NY times seems to consider publishable nowadays.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > _"There's an unmistakable energy in all the designs that [Roger Excoffon] > does," said Tobias Frere-Jones, a Brooklyn-based typeface designer. "They > project their personality so clearly. And it's very obviously not Helvetica > or not Times or any other generic thing that might be on the awning next > door." Excoffon's most popular typeface is probably Mistral, which was > modeled after his own handwriting._

Both this passage and Exofon's fonts remind me of Henry van der Horst, a Dutch graphic designer who basically has a monopoly on Dutch market signs. His work has become so ubiquitous that a market stall without it feels less "authentic", so there is a lot of demand for his work.

It's crazy: _everyone_ here knows his handwriting, without knowing it was one man doing all of those signs for decades, and when I say "all those signs" I mean that at a national level (altough the Netherlands is small of course). He's like a weird kind of anonymous household name ("anonyfamous?"). Well, until a newspaper wrote an article about him down a few years ago, that is.

[0] [http://www.willemverweijen.nl/henry-van-de- horst/](http://www.willemverweijen.nl/henry-van-de-horst/)

[1] [https://www.volkskrant.nl/mensen/-op-de-markt-doet- niemand-a...](https://www.volkskrant.nl/mensen/-op-de-markt-doet-niemand-aan- jargon-~bc16a6f6/)

<comment> 52-6F-62 Funny! Reminds me of the old Honest Ed's signage here in Toronto (since shut down).

[https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2016/04/01/8-of-honest- eds-...](https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2016/04/01/8-of-honest-eds-most- iconic-hand-painted-signs-up-for-sale.html)

[https://toronto.citynews.ca/2016/10/19/iconic-honest-eds- sig...](https://toronto.citynews.ca/2016/10/19/iconic-honest-eds-signs-up-for- sale-one-last-time/)

<comment><USER5> Gorgeous, the connection is pretty clear, yeah! Makes me wonder if the handwritten signs from the last century couldn't be considered one of those kind of undocumented, almost subconscious arts "traditions". Kind of like how all kebab places seem to follow the exact same horrible aesthetic without it being a coordinated effort.

<comment><USER6> Oh there is plenty of documentation on these sorts of things, in the form of tradecraft manuals. The first example that comes to mind is the Speedball lettering manuals ([https://www.printmag.com/design-inspiration/the-speedball- te...](https://www.printmag.com/design-inspiration/the-speedball-textbook/)) but there's other ones out there that have gone through many printings.

<comment><USER5> Very cool, thanks for the link and the terms I should search for online if I want to learn more!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ironically, come over to Japan and you will hardly see a single sign typeset in Choc, or any of the popular wonton fonts[1], anywhere. This is despite the fact Latin text is very commonly used in JP storefronts as decorative elements. The collective impressions around those fonts represent a westerner's orientalist stereotype of the East, not of the _actual_ East. To an Asian native, it comes off as cheesy as hell.

I usually find most complaints of cultural appropriation frivolous; go ahead and dress up as ninjas or wear kimonos all you like, we don't care! But this in particular keeps bugging me somewhat, as hardly anyone - even the writer of this article - seems to care about that angle much. Even in the logo for Disney's Big Hero 6[2], which I assume was supposed to be Disney's love letter to JP pop culture, wonton font influences die hard. (At least they de- wontonned the logo for the Japanese release, retitled as "Baymax."[3])

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonton_font](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonton_font)

[2] [https://vgboxart.com/resources/logo/8390_big- hero-6-prev.png](https://vgboxart.com/resources/logo/8390_big-hero-6-prev.png)

[3] [http://www.lightweight.tokyo/3ds/baymax_hero/images/catch/lo...](http://www.lightweight.tokyo/3ds/baymax_hero/images/catch/logo.png)

<comment><USER8> Of course the lettering in Japan is not set in faux-asian typesetting since you already have real-asian typesetting everywhere else. Latin typesetting is mostly added to add a sense of occident stereotypes (to the point where the latin writing makes little to no sense, similarly how Superdry's Japanese slogan makes no sense to Japanese speakers), writing it in a brush stroke would defeat the purpose of such styling.

This is also why you don't see fake-cyrillic writing in any country using cyrillic because it is just odd and meaningless to readers to these scripts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interestingly, this hiring ad from the JS console :-)

main.js:14 0000000 000 0000000 111111111 11111111100 000 111111111 00000 111111111111111111 00000 000000 000 1111111111111111111111111100000 000 000 1111 1111111111111111100 000 000 11 0 1111111100 000 000 1 00 1 000 000 00 00 1 000 000 000 00000 1 000 00000 0000 00000000 1 00000 11111 000 00 000000 000 11111 00000 0000 000000 00000 00000 000 10000 000000 000 0000 000 00000 000000 1 000 000 000000 10000 1 0 000 000 1000000 00 1 00 000 000 1111111 1 0000 000 000 1111111100 000000 000 0000 111111111111111110000000 0000 111111111 111111111111100000 111111111 0000000 00000000 0000000

NYTimes.com: All the code that's fit to printf() We're hiring: developers.nytimes.com/careers

update: Those 0s and 1s formed an ascii-art style nytimes logo. The format is messed up.

</comment><comment><USER10> This font is also known as Staccato 555.

It was ripped off by Bitstream and included in the Bitstream TrueType Font Pack for Microsoft Windows 3.1

For some information about these fonts see [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.fonts/y3BOdTKSg...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.fonts/y3BOdTKSgc0)

<comment><USER11> > This font is also known as Staccato 555.

It's mentioned in the article that it was packaged as part of CorelDraw under this name.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> See also: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonton_font](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonton_font)

</comment><comment><USER13> After watching "Stranger Things" with my son, we play now Spot-The-Benguiat- Font everywhere.

</comment><comment><USER14> There's a font I'm curious about, I wonder if anyone here knows it. I seem to see all round Czech Republic, I don't know the name, but you can see it in the sign for this place (the pic outside - "BUN CA HAI PHONG"): [https://www.tripadvisor.cz/Restaurant_Review-g274714-d116867...](https://www.tripadvisor.cz/Restaurant_Review-g274714-d11686718-Reviews- Bistro_Hai_Phong-Brno_South_Moravian_Region_Moravia.html)

It's used a lot in Vietnamese restaurants but also appears in random businesses (garages, hairdressers). I also saw it a lot when I visited Vietnam - I'd guess it's from there.

<comment><USER15> Banco? By the same designer and mentioned in the article. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banco_(typeface)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banco_\(typeface\))

<comment><USER16> I remember seeing Banco everywhere on storefronts in France when I was there on holiday as a kid in the 80s. I immediately recognized it because it's also the font of the Thrasher magazine logo. Back then, I found it hilarious that every third boulangerie and charcuterie had that "Thrasher" font. I've never seen it on a German shop sign, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> In case anyone wants to see the font in question and/or purchase and download a copy: [https://www.fonts.com/font/itc/choc](https://www.fonts.com/font/itc/choc)

</comment><comment><USER18> _Paul Boegemann was trained as one such sign painter — he is the proprietor of Paul Signs Inc., in Greenwood Heights, Brooklyn — and has been in business for over 35 years._

 _"I learned how to hand letter signs and trucks," Mr. Boegemann said. "We started with a simple pencil and paper. We designed what we wanted and used the styles we wanted and knew how to apply..."_

 _Asked if he's ever made a sign in Choc, Mr. Boegemann said: "This style is a 'Bastard' letter style."_

I like this guy :-D

<comment><USER19> AFAIK the term is how brushed typeface are called in the industry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Oops... they either let Kumo II slip in or intended it to be there as an example of Mistral, the other font from the designer of Choc, and forgot to point that out.

<comment><USER21> The "Japanese Cusine" below the shop name is the specimen, not the shop name itself.

<comment><USER20> Aha... thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Hey, it's better than Papyrus.

</comment><comment><USER23> I remember how incredible it was to have so many different fonts in Windows 3.1, Staccato was one of the favorites in my family

</comment><comment><USER24> Oh no... now I will not be able to unsee.

</comment><comment><USER25> Hint: its not about Helvetica.

</comment><comment><USER26> What about Matura

</comment><comment><USER27> An off-brand Comic Sans, then.

</comment><comment><USER28> Looks like Comic Sans to me :-)

<comment><USER5> Obviously you're not a golfer.. I mean typographer :P

I can see why it might remind an untrained eye of Comic Sans, but I strongly disagree. Then again, I have an arts degree, so let's chalk that up to _déformation professionnelle_.

The funny thing about Comic Sans is that you can see that it is from the nineties computer era. Although I don't know if it was first created on paper and then transferred, or created directly on a computer, its curves feel both too mathematically "perfect", and at the same time ruined by human intervention. This is probably best highlighted by fonts that attempt to "fix" Comic Sans, like Comic Neue[0]. It's a bit like how tweening in computer animation can feel off when it uses naive linear interpolation, because it breaks our intuitions of normal physics (or is maybe that's just me).

Choc on the other hand is very clearly (to me) a font that was created before the digital era. The brushstrokes feel natural in a way that we could not create from within a computer medium until recently (thinking in the order of decades). _And yet_ , its feels more consistent with itself than the comic sans letters do. Furthermore, if you view it in the context of designs from the fifties it just "fits", you can see that it was a products of its time (same with Comic Sans and Microsoft Bob being visibly a nineties product, actually - and that is not me throwing shade on either of them).

[0] [http://comicneue.com/](http://comicneue.com/)

<comment><USER29> Is there a book/resource you would recommend to someone who is interested in learning more about typography, and how/why the field has evolved the way it has? (Honest question.)

<comment><USER5> I'd love to help, but typography wasn't my direction. It's just that any training in the visual arts bleeds into other visual arts. Apologies, I should have been more clear about that in the previous comment.

Sure other people here _do_ know more on the subject though, let's hope they'll see your question and give some suggestions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> How is it that in 2018 with all the decentralised technologies that have been created we don't have a simple way to mirror nytimes articles... perhaps on some kind of "permanent web"?

<comment><USER31> We don't have a _legal_ way.

FTFY

<comment><USER32> We have a technical method to do so, but the site has not been created, that I know of. For example:

* A domain name like ipfs://nytimesmirror.com that mirrors nytimes articles (at the same relative URLs) * Some kind of crowdsourced process for content curation.

I'm aware that it's not legal, but I wouldn't be against it. Content piracy has been a catalyst for change. I simultaneously would be willing to pay nytimes for access to their content but I'm not willing to sign up to a $15 / month subscription. So if their content was widely pirated using delivery method like IPFS they might be incentivized to problem solve that for me.

<comment><USER33> > Content piracy has been a catalyst for change.

Yet paying for content has been a catalyst for...content.

> they might be incentivized to problem solve that for me.

What is that even supposed to mean?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> The article misses the obvious: the font resembles Asian brush strokes, and will be especially used for signage on Asian restaurants which are disproportionately represented in the examples.

<comment><USER35> Literally from the article:

"This could have to do with what Choc evokes. For some it bears a resemblance to the calligraphic forms of Asian writing systems.

However, it's disputed as to whether Choc was a direct homage to these styles...There's no denying that Choc has become a typographical shorthand for Asian-themed restaurants."</comment></comment>


The Trouble With Bright Girls - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/heidi-grant-halvorson-phd/girls-confidence_b_828418.html?view=print

<comment><USER2> Another article on this subject with unwarranted jumps to conclusions. The first sentences set the gemneral overgeneralizing tone. But how about this:

"How do girls and boys develop these different views? Most likely, it has to do with the kinds of feedback we get from parents and teachers as young children."

In today's competitive parenting world, I'd be _very_ doubtful that parents are holding back on their girls and 5 is such an early age for such discrepancy to occur. But these are my _thoughts_ on the subject, similar to hers. We both have to back them with proof, if there's any. Otherwise it's idle chatter.</comment>


Apple briefly passes Exxon as No. 1 market cap - <AUTHOR> http://www.marketwatch.com/story/apple-briefly-passes-exxon-as-no-1-market-cap-2011-08-09

<comment><USER2> Some enterprising financial writer should take this opportunity to identify what the most valuable company currently listed on the exchanges= is, taking into account dividends payed out to their investors (which typically reduce the value of the stock by the amount of the dividend)

It's not Microsoft: [http://breakoutperformance.blogspot.com/2010/08/microsoft- sh...](http://breakoutperformance.blogspot.com/2010/08/microsoft-should-raise- its-dividend.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Bravo for Apple. iPod, iPhone, iPad, Air... has been a truly amazing decade!

<comment><USER4> When Apple has a mishap (e.g. "antennae gate") it really doesn't hurt anyone in the long run.

When Exxon has a mishap (e.g. the Valdez in 1989 and ensuing punitive damages <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exxon_Valdez_oil_spill>), where in turn "J.P. Morgan created the first modern credit default swap in 1994, so that Morgan's would not have to hold as much money in reserve (8% of the loan under Basel I) against the risk of Exxon's default."

In a weird way, Exxon triggered the beginning of the madness.

That all being said, Lion's new "natural gestures" could come back to haunt us all in about 10 years.

EDIT: To be fair, Apple didn't have to do anything. Over the past 2 weeks, Exxon has lost around 17%. They've simply passed Apple on the way down.

<comment><USER5> Just a correction: Morgan Stanley invented the CDS. J.P. Morgan came later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is anyone surprised? Will you be surprised when Amazon is bigger than Walmart?

<comment><USER7> I will be. Wal-Mart's revenues are $421 billion a year. Amazon.com is $34 billion. They also have fundamentally different core businesses: Amazon's core is easily delivered items which are often difficult to find in stores, Wal- Mart's core is easy-to-find items for which delivery service poses problems.

If Amazon gets bigger than Wal-Mart, it will be because the market in easy deliverables becomes very large but the capabilities of general search companies fail to keep pace. Otherwise, Amazon continues its conversion to a data center and payment processing company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks like it'll end the day still having more cap than XOM.

I don't know if it will stick but this is phenomenal for what is, essentially, the quintessential silicon valley startup.

</comment><comment><USER9> Does anyone remember this?

"What I can't figure out is why he is even trying? He knows he can't win." – Bill Gates, referring to Steve Jobs returning as CEO of Apple, in 1998.</comment>


Syncfusion Essential Studio for JavaScript for $1 - <AUTHOR>

http://www.syncfusion.com/sales/offers/js-hobbyist<p>To celebrate the official release of Essential Studio for JavaScript, Syncfusion is offering a special hobbyist license. Hobbyist licenses allow for commercial use by individual developers.<p>+ The first JavaScript control framework designed for line-of-business (LOB) applications<p>+ 40+ unique controls including charts, grids, maps, gauges and much more<p>+ Includes one year of support and updates <comment><USER2> Does this provide me with the code?

<comment><AUTHOR> There is sample code with the download and more online.</comment></comment>


Top Microsoft exec says online privacy has reached 'a crisis point' - <AUTHOR> https://edition.cnn.com/2019/10/14/success/microsoft-brad-smith-online-privacy-boss-files/ <comment><USER2> Ironic. It's an article about Microsoft and "online privacy" without any mention of telemetry that can't be disabled.

<comment><USER3> An article posted recently talked about how to reduce anger about your actions by talking about them in the abstract. Talk about the concept, the noun, rather than what you are doing (the verb) and people will feel less anger toward you.

<comment><USER2> Doesn't seem to work. ;)</comment></comment></comment>


Flappy Bird to return, says creator - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-26659933

<comment><USER2> It was only a matter of time. Flappy bird simply made way too much passive money.</comment>


What do you think of my demo video? - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WaBkEittPg&spfreload=10

<comment><AUTHOR> I've just created a demo video for my online service - the goal is to increase conversion and get people to understand the service. I made it quite quick n' dirty - but I would love some feedback on the general direction. Any ideas on how it possibly could be improved to more effectively reach my goal? The service can in short de described as a collaborative idea box for teams and organisations. You can take a look on both the demo and site here: [https://www.brightly.io](https://www.brightly.io)</comment>


Can you create recursion using only anonymous functions? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@zaven/can-you-create-recursion-using-only-anonymous-functions-8b9481938410#.7p458ovsy <comment><USER2> I always believed that the y-combinator would be some convoluted and hard incomprehensible piece of academic insanity.

Quite the opposite, it was incredibly easy to grasp. "Oh, _that 's_ all?"</comment>


Building Software Systems at Google (Jeffery Dean) - <AUTHOR> http://ee380.stanford.edu/permlinks/101110-Dean.html

<comment><USER2> Useful presentation, though I don't know how reliant Google still is on MapReduce for search.

There's a slide in there "Numbers Everyone Should Know" that deserves its title -- things like 10,000,000ns for a disk seek.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> A Stanford Computer Science Distinguished Computer Science lecture.</comment>


Kimono - Turns websites into structured APIs - <AUTHOR> http://www.kimonolabs.com/

<comment><USER2> It looks awesome. I always wanted to have a scraping tool like this one !</comment>


Ask HN: If you attended a bootcamp, did you find work as an engineer afterwards? - <AUTHOR> I made a tiny one-question Twitter poll to better understand coding bootcamp outcomes and whether they line up with what attendees are promised.<p>It lives here: https://twitter.com/alinelernerLLC/status/791065299097231360 <comment><USER2> > If you attended a bootcamp, did you find work as an engineer afterwards?

Yes. I haven't attended any bootcamp, but the fact that I found a job as an IT engineer makes the implication from the title true.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_consequence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_consequence)</comment>


Ask HN: Facebook ads best practices? - <AUTHOR> Does anyone have any learnings or best practices to share about Facebook ads?<p>I'm looking to try Facebook ads and see what the conversion rate is for my website, but before I do that, I'd like to see what the community thinks about them. Thanks! <comment><USER2> Hi man,

it really depends on the type of business/product you try to promote and your FB PPC skills (targeting and creative).

Generally FB isn't a good place to generate direct eCommerce sales, but it's great for Lead Gen, Branding, content promotion.

I'd recommend to start with one campaign and test 40-50 (not necessarily all at once) ad targeting via separate ad group. If your budget is small so target a small and precise audience and bid $20-$30 daily on each ad group.

That will give you an idea about what is the right way to target your audience, who are they and what they do, and what type of creative drives the best response from them.

Here is a recent post I wrote regarding Facebook targeting, you may find it valuable as well.

[https://medium.com/@yurishub/7-facebook-ads-tips-to-help- you...](https://medium.com/@yurishub/7-facebook-ads-tips-to-help-you-avoid- wasting-advertising-dollars-12f8281bce44)

Good luck!</comment>


Google to phase out user-agent strings in Chrome - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-to-phase-out-user-agent-strings-in-chrome/ <comment><USER2> It this a big deal? It's not that UA has ever been super useful at detecting browser features (browsers lie about themselves since ever).</comment>


Sugarfoot Stomp - <AUTHOR> http://www.oxfordamerican.org/magazine/item/730-sugarfoot-stomp <comment><USER2> How on Earth did this make the front page? I mean, it's not that I ever get tired of seeing Massachusetts Yankees and California carpetbaggers use a magazine named after my hometown to tell us Southrons what they demand that we be, but I am somewhat surprised to see it here, of all places. Perhaps I shouldn't be.

<comment><USER3> The author, while indeed born in Massachusetts, is by all accounts a Southerner. Check her bio -- she even got her M.A. at Mississippi.

I just came here to say what an excellent piece of writing this was. I won't even dignify the rest of your comment, and honestly having read it here saddens me.</comment></comment>


I just killed a social game mechanic - <AUTHOR> http://www.gravity7.com/blog/media/2010/08/507.html

<comment><USER2> After reading through that thorough dissection of those rules, I'd be interested to see the author's suggestions for a deck of his own.</comment>


F6s Startup Community launches Mentor Shares Agreement Template - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/10/05/f6s-startup-community-launches-mentor-shares-agreement-to-fomalise-startup-mentor-agreements/

<comment><USER2> It seems a little strange to me that either party can terminate at any point without cause when there may be an agreement to vest shares in place, at least in the UK version. Shares do continue to vest during the notice period but this is likely to be a limited period of time.

I suppose you would just increase this period of time to whatever length was necessary but this seems a circuitous way of dealing with the issue.

I wouldn't allow termination without cause if I was due to get shares after a certain amount of time.

<comment><USER3> Grabeh - good points. We had feedback from f6s community members that they wanted to cover the case where either Mentor or Startup priorities changed during the agreement. The idea behind the ability to mutually terminate was to make sure either party could get out if the relationship wasn't delivering.

Your thinking on increasing the termination period is spot on. That was inserted primarily to cover the case where the Startup terminates the agreement after the Mentor delivers but before a 'fair' amount of vesting has happened. An extreme case would be where the Mentor delivers significant value before the Cliff Period ends, but the Startup terminates the agreement before any shares have vested.

Mentor/Startup alignment is key.

Having said all that, it's a template licensed under Creative Commons so please go ahead and modify it as needed for your particular case. Always be protected and use a legal professional ;)

<comment><USER2> Hey, thanks for the response! I just didn't want anyone getting screwed over by unscrupulous behaviour!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> beware registration wall

<comment><USER3> Good catch Bobinator

We intended to launch the Mentor Shares site so you could both view the page and download the documents without registering, but the open download bit obviously didn't stick.

We've updated the page now and you can download the docs freely.

Having f6s generate a doc for you still requires log-in.</comment></comment>


Show HN: A world cup 2018 live dashboard with browser notifications - <AUTHOR> https://victorparmar.github.io/worldcup-live/ <comment><USER2> Cool!

Suggestion: Show the times in terms of now (using browser's local time), e.g. "in 2 hours" etc. At the very least, include the timezone. I find it confusing when sites publish scheduled times without timezone or relative time, because you never know what system they're using to store the times. Could be UTC, could be my local timezone, could be the timezone of the game... I don't know unless you tell me. Maybe take a look how Google does this (search for a game and see the knowledge card; they explicitly show timezones)

Also, maybe an oversight: the README/comments here say you're using api.football-data.org but the footer of the site says you're using worldcup.sfg.io.

Overall, cool project and nicely timed. I know it's not easy to ship side projects on a schedule like that :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Hey, nice site, I was looking into API's and such for my simple site: [http://feed.football](http://feed.football) what API are you pulling that data from and how did you hide the key on the front end?

<comment><USER4> Hi, sorry Im not sure on the API being used. But just to let you know you can access an API by creating your own endpoint to call, which then calls the target API. In which case your not exposing the target API's key as its backend code. Then you can ensure only your users are using their particular key and for example rate limit them yourself.

Hope this helps</comment></comment>


Dispelling Backblaze's HDD Reliability Myth - <AUTHOR> http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/6028/dispelling-backblaze-s-hdd-reliability-myth-the-real-story-covered/index.html <comment><USER3> I read the article with great anticipation, but the author fails to poke any more holes in Backblaze's test that they themselves haven't already caveated.

Backblaze already acknowledged that their usage environment doesn't reflect that of normal consumer, yet the author harps on the point.

The author tries to debunk Backblaze's claim that it found no correlation between drive temperature and failure rate. Yet he presents no evidence that Backblaze's methodolgy was wrong.

Backblaze had large enough sample to have even distribution of drives in various temperature, rack, and load environment. I doubt they put all Seagate drives in the middle shelf of Ver. 1 racks where it was the hottest, but put all Hitachi drives in the bottom of the Ver. 3 racks where it was cooler and more stable.

Unless there is another study that shows failure rate of these drives in normal consumer environment, Seagate's 3-5x failure rate should give people a pause.

<comment><USER4> I find it particularly galling that "Everybody knows temperature is important" is the rebuttal to a bunch of data saying "we didn't see an effect".

If you've got data, post it. If not, it starts to sound like astroturf.

Fwiw, with my small sample size, I agree with backblaze. Seagates appear to be failing more, and avoid wdc greens.

<comment><USER5>
      > and avoid wdc greens

Why? Backblaze reports 3.6% AFR on wdc greens over 4.4 years, which is pretty good.

<comment><USER6> Anecdotally, at my last job, we had used them on several of our internal file and VM servers (because they were cheap), and they had a nasty habit of falling off the bus overnight, causing the RAID controller to go berserk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> >"Backblaze claims that drive temperature doesn't affect drive life. That is counter to the observations of many others, including drive manufacturers."

Google has a whitepaper[0] on a large deployed sample size of drives which disagree with the author's claims here. I agree that more data from backblaze would be nice, but their claims do seem to have more plausibility than the author suggests. (If he has methodology issues with the Google paper, that would be more interesting)

[0]- [http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.co...](http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en//archive/disk_failures.pdf) (pdf warning)

<comment><USER8> There's a typo in that link.

[http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.co...](http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en//archive/disk_failures.pdf)

I'm more inclined to believe Google's results than anybody elses, the amount of data they have is staggering and the results they got are fairly clear cut. I personally don't bother cooling spinning disks, it just seems like a complete waste of time and effort based on that paper.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "With varying numbers of drives for each model, it is possible that some bad batches may have made their way into the sample pool, thus further skewing the numbers."

So, to measure drive reliability, the author recommends that you don't count unreliable drives, since it may "skew the numbers"?

</comment><comment><USER10> This Tweaktown article offers nothing in the way of factual evidence to discount any of the hard work Backblaze put into that blog post.

Shame on Tweaktown for poo poo'ing on Backblaze's effort.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm curious why the author believes that beating the ever loving crap out of drives in harsh conditions and seeing which ones come out, overall, on top creates a myth. Perhaps the Backblaze article is better headlined "which hard drives seem to hold up well under pressure." Consumer environments usually have crappy, unreliable power (power strip chained to power strip plugged into an outlet from the 1960s), random vibrations (especially with kids), and poor air flow conditions (who here has done Family IT and had to carve the dust out of the case stuck behind a non-moving fan?). The only thing a consumer environment lacks from Backblaze's comparison is 24/7 read/write operations.

<comment><USER9> I would read an article about how bullet-resistant different models of car are, but I wouldn't completely change my purchasing decisions, as I avoid bullets. (Whoa, I didn't even mean to use a car analogy.)

"Consumer environments usually have crappy, unreliable power ..."

I would hope that Backblaze is on reliable, stable, data center power -- though knowing how cost-conscious they are, perhaps not -- so that's one aspect where they wouldn't be able to provide good information.

<comment><USER12> You got it backwards. You live in Kabul, so the article on bullet resistance is completely relevant. The point is that Backblaze's deployment conditions are way more similar to a domestic user's than other enterprise deployments.

<comment><USER9> More similar, yes, but maybe not similar enough. I wonder if it's the pathological vibration killing the Seagates. If so, you don't want to use Seagates in a file server sitting on top of your washing machine, but maybe they're fine for your living room media box.

Edit: Unlike Backblaze, I have no hard numbers, and can only pull suppositions out of my ass.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This article is astonishing. I try hard to give the benefit of the doubt to authors (as opposed to salespeople, speechwriters, and advertisers), and assume that they have good intentions and believe what they are saying. But I can't find any explanation for this article other than paid hit-piece or personal vendetta.

Here's the article's conclusion:

 _The data from Backblaze should not influence a purchasing decision by any consumer, regardless of what type of drive they are purchasing. The innumerable variables, and lack of documentation, ensures the results are unreliable. Even for the winners, the results aren 't good; the failure rates are exponentially higher than those observed in the real-world. One should question whether these companies could survive financially with the massive warranty return rates in real-world scenarios._

And here is some of the logic:

 _It is the release of the data, in handy charts and graphs that encourage misrepresentation, which brings out the data-storage stickler in me. HDD manufacturers spend billions of dollars in R &D, and their labs are designed to characterize and measure the reliability and endurance of their storage solutions._

This last line converted from to "undecided" to "paid propaganda", as I doubt that vendettas come with such clearly presented "suggested talking points". It's worth reading if just to see such a stunning example of the art form.

<comment><USER14> A third option other than hit-piece or vendetta would be just page views.

A lot of tech writers and bloggers just write counter pieces to popular articles in the hope to get read, spread and shared by whoever dislikes or disagrees with the original article. It's become very common to see articles like "Why [insert yesterdays top HN post] is wrong/will never work/is flawed/..." on HN and reddit.

<comment><USER13> I'm willing to believe that page views are his and his employer's intent, and I'm willing to believe it would be titled as it is, the level of vitriol in the content makes me think there must be something more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The author of this article (Paul) appears to ignore the law of large numbers - while Paul's arguments against using the figures from Backblaze as measures of drive reliability would hold if Backblaze's analysis was based on a small sample size, because their sample size is relatively large, Paul's criticisms don't hold. Paul's argument is that any analysis of hard-drive reliability should control for factors like vibration and temperature as these vary in all environments - but in fact, because Backblaze has taken large (enough) sample of drives, these variations are already controlled for (ie cancelled out). Sure the consumer is probably never going to experience a failure irrespective of whether the buy a seagate or WD drive - but that's not the point - <USER2> point is that the long tail of the distribution, WD and Fujitsu beat Seagate for reliability. That is still valuable information for people, even if they aren't going to be using their drives in the same type of environment as Backblaze.

</comment><comment><USER16> Warning: Browsing this site on ios mobilesafari will randomly taskswitch into the app store app, onto the buy page for some ios game.

<comment><USER17> That has been happening to me more and more recently. It's _amazingly_ obnoxious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Of course it isn't a large scale scientific experiment with controls in place for all the variables they are running a business and the data is a by-product (albeit one which they can use to optimise their own business).

But it is the largest scale testing I'm aware of that publishes the manufacturer names. For that alone it is valuable. I also like the fact it is harsher than normal environment, I don't want the most reliable disk if it never gets touched or used or to have to baby it.

</comment><comment><USER19> That article was just like reading the Backblaze post, if the Backblaze post had been split into three pages and covered in ads.</comment>


Show HN: Postagon, medium.com for the novice blogger - <AUTHOR> http://www.postagon.com/

<comment><USER2> Lovely! Good job on the overall look and feel. If the posting experience is as slick as the reading experience, I think you'll do well.

I do agree that the Login and Express Signup buttons feel "off", but that's just a few lines of CSS to fix.

When you've got the time and money, I'd also encourage you to work with a copywriter to set your tone a bit better.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed on the login/copy. Last minute changes...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Looks nice and clean :) I've one question though, What would you do if the bloggers stop paying after sometime ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Their blog just turns private if the membership is cancelled.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks nice. Despite the naysayers, I like your service better most blogging platforms. One thing that kills me about medium.com is that I don't have analytics. Does your service offer something like number of page views, time on page, bounce rate, etc?

<comment><AUTHOR> you can only add your analytics account right now but the stats part is something i'll add later.

<comment><USER5> Collecting the stats you are likely to want/need is much easier and quicker than figuring out how to display them, just a thought :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Do you support comments? The whole props/kudos/like trend is replacing meaningful interaction between users and creators. It's so much easier to click a thumbs-up icon than it is to formulate a clear opinion and articulate your thoughts, but the end result when you take the time to do so is so much more fulfilling for both parties.

<comment><AUTHOR> They're most definitely on the upcoming list, but probably default off.

<comment><USER6> Why default off? Are today's bloggers afraid of feedback beyond "n people liked this"?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not at all but I think users should rather enable features on purpose since comments might turn into work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "You can sign up for free and try out Postagon for 3 days — no credit card required. To launch your blog to the public, simply activate your membership."

Why only 3 days of tryout if it's not even public?

<comment><AUTHOR> Longer trial periods usually don't lead to better conversions. I might extend it to a week though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> At first glance the blogs look very attractive - I really like the design. Do you have plans to increase the level of personalisation over time, or are you trying to keep the look relatively homogenous?

<comment><AUTHOR> I focus on equal looks across all platforms but more custom stuff is of course planned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> You really shouldn't mention medium.com in one line you have. Serious bloggers will stop reading right there.

Overall, I give you thumbs up.

<comment><USER10> You think the "for the novice blogger" part won't turn off serious bloggers?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> ...$7/mo for a blog platform you don't control?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. I will post how it turns out.

<comment><USER11> I wouldn't expect that to work well in the long-run, since Ghost (<http://tryghost.org/features.html>) has the same features (Markdown + minimalistic design), and it's open source.

And that's not counting the fact that Medium itself is free.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not targeting users who are capable of hosting their own blog, let alone caring about whether it's open source or free. There are still people who are astounded by the simple possibility of putting their own content on the web.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Your login buttons design doesnt seem to fit... this includes the blue and the sharp corner.</comment>


Show HN: Seinfeld Calendar webapp. - <AUTHOR>

http://sein-cal.co.cc/
This is our first web application. It is a no-frills implementation of the Seinfeld Calendar, and aids in improving productivity by helping form habits.
We (two of us) started with it 5 days ago. With a bit of Python background, we decided to go at it with Django. The process was in itself a learning experience with remote collaboration, learning and using git to manage the code, and using App Engine with Django. All for the first time.
Feedback welcome. <comment><USER2> I like the idea - I'm a big fan of the Seinfeld Calendar method of forming habits - although in practice I find that I end up using a piece of paper for my calendar.

I'm not sure if it's intentional, but it seems weird that you can't change today's status from completed to "good" to "bad". That make sense for positive goals ("I will do X"), because once you've done something you can't undo it, but it doesn't work for negative ones ("I won't do Y") - since you might end up doing that thing after you've set your status, and want to go back and fix it.

If you're looking for a similar service, check out Joe's Goals (<http://www.joesgoals.com/>). The interface is nowhere near as nice, but it allows you to have a few goals going at once and track them with more granularity than Seinfeld's initial concept.

<comment><AUTHOR> The status is automatically set as 'not done' if the user hasn't set it as 'completed' till the next day. The point was to keep the box open for today and the day before, so that even I complete the task late at night, I could mark the calendar the day after.

We did think of including multiple goals, but that would break the simplicity of the approach of the Seinfeld Calendar.

Basically, we tried to simulate the exact process if it were a physical calendar on your wall. Once you put on a "X" mark on a day, you can't erase it. The sign-up process was made really non-fussy so that a user wouldn't mind signing up for multiple accounts, but keep a single calendar per goal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Cool idea and a clean implementation. Just out of curiosity, are there any plans to monetize in the future?

Also, this may just be me, but I'm not a fan of the domain.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. No plans to monetize, as of now.

We loved going through the process of it, and will try to fix out any possible bugs.

The .co.cc or the sein-cal part?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Excellent concept. Had never heard of this before...but love the concept. Is there a way to manage multiple tasks at the same time?

<comment><AUTHOR> we wouldn't mind adding it, but it would create clutter on the calendar page.

though, a user can always sign-up for multiple accounts.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> <http://www.sein-cal.co.cc/mis-speled> :-)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Link - <http://sein-cal.co.cc/></comment>


Show HN: PlanEOL, Support Information Database - <AUTHOR> https://www.planeol.com <comment><USER2> At my old company, I built technopedia.com, which used to hold all of this information available in a nice, convenient, searchable interface. That said, it appears they've retired that information since I left, and relegated the actual product to an animated gif on the homepage?

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't know what is this, but it seems you've bundled together a lot of data from different sources.</comment>


CEO of Intercom to address staff over harassment allegations - <AUTHOR> https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/boss-of-dublin-tech-company-to-address-staff-over-harassment-allegations-1.3887588 <comment><AUTHOR> A few articles on this, not many.

[https://www.independent.ie/business/technology/news/ceo- of-i...](https://www.independent.ie/business/technology/news/ceo-of-irish- unicorn-software-firm-intercom-responds-to-hr-complaints-apologises-for-poor- judgement-38096683.html)

[https://www.businessinsider.com/intercom-ceo-eoghan- mccabe-a...](https://www.businessinsider.com/intercom-ceo-eoghan-mccabe- apologizes-after-harassment-charges-arise-2019-5?r=US&IR=T) (has a paywall)</comment>


Introduction to Adversarial Machine Learning - <AUTHOR> https://blog.floydhub.com/introduction-to-adversarial-machine-learning/ <comment><USER2> What I would like to understand better is how transferable these adversarial images are from a network to another. I mean is the adversity "deep", like practically all models built on resnet18 (or even completely different models) suffer from the adveristy? Or is it "shallow", meaning just one more training round will mess up the special "gradient paths" found for these particular network weights?

<comment><USER3> That is a good question. I'm not aware of someone exploring this avenue, but it would be interesting to see what categories of models are fooled by what types of noise.

<comment><USER4> "Noise" is the wrong way to think about these IMO, while robustness to noise implies robustness to a degree of perturbations, the perturbations have clearly outlined "directions" which can be visualised via so called "church plots". Seyed-Mohsen Moosavi-Dezfooli [http://smoosavi.me/](http://smoosavi.me/) and the lab of Prof. Frossard have done amazing work exploring this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Not worried enough? Imagine an attacker who manipulates road signs in a way > such that self-driving cars will break traffic rules.

If someone was manipulating a bunch of road signs for bad, human drivers would probably be in trouble too..I guess the point is that these attacks could be more subtle/scalable?

<comment><USER6> It's the subtlety, because vision algorithms don't necessarily look at the world like we do.

Here, some folks perturbed an image of a cat to scan as guacamole, and have 3d printed a model of a turtle that scans as a rifle: [https://www.labsix.org/physical-objects-that-fool-neural- net...](https://www.labsix.org/physical-objects-that-fool-neural-nets/)

<comment><USER7> More on this point: computer vision tasks are (currently) far more reliant on the presence of a number of identifying features in the high frequency details of images.

The are looking for a significant subset of some identifying group of highly localised features:

think a large number of small things, rather than a small number of large things;

think colour gradients rather than colours.

These sorts of high frequency pieces of information can be placed into images in a way that is imperceivable to humans, but screams at computer vision neural networks.

A sign could say no right turn to people and no left turn to machines.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This confirms my opinion that the only way for self driving cars to work is for every car on the road to be a self-driving car. Stop signs would become like train semaphores where rather than being purely visual, there are other electronic indicators that tell the car to stop at a certain point. The roads should then be more like a train network. I really think this will mean more efficient use of space since you can have shorter following distance (this was achieved on the train network too once automated systems took over from human drivers). Trying to blend self-driving and human driven cars is just going to cause a huge mess. Accounting for human mistakes _and_ AI mistakes is just too big a problem for AI to solve right now, and imo, for a very long time.

<comment><USER9> And at this stage, at least in the context of cities, cars begin to make very little sense compared to tried and true alternatives like trains and subways. Combined with people-first city planning, there really is no need for so many cars in urban areas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I find adversarial attack super interesting. It opens up a field in machine learning where people questions the robustness of models. Adversarial examples exist because of many reasons, with data and weight space being high- dimensional as one.

IMO, the world needs to pay more attention to this, as we implement more and more AI applications. What worries me more is that we still don't really have a good solution to his problem. Pretty much every model that is defended can be attacked in another way.

My guess for now is that we would have to go all the way back, and question about the assumptions we are making about high dimensional spaces, and use a more rigorous way to prove theorems and lemma about AI systems, rather than experimentally saying the accuracy is high enough therefore it works.

</comment><comment><USER11> It's hard for me to imagine how an adversarial machine learning attack would work in practice. Sure, you might be able to fool Shazam, but it's not like Tesla or Waymo are going to give you free access to their models.

</comment><comment><USER12> Is this a sufficient risk that an AI company would be wise to hire an adversarial security engineer? Or is this still well below hypothetical?

<comment><USER13> Depends.

Isn't an adversarial security engineer just a regular QA guy for your model?

An application expecting a number between 10 and 20 and receiving a number larger than an integer causing an error isn't a new issue.</comment></comment>


Whatever happened to Quora? - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/trends?q=quora&ctab=0&geo=all&date=ytd&sort=0

<comment><USER2> The spike probably had a lot to do with the release of Tron: Legacy on December 17 who had a character named Quorra which could easily be misspelled as Quora. The trend for Quorra largely follows this spike as seen at [http://www.google.com/trends?q=quorra&ctab=0&geo=all...](http://www.google.com/trends?q=quorra&ctab=0&geo=all&date=ytd&sort=0)

Nothing happend to Quora.com.

<comment><USER3> Hmmm. Is this an established practice for choosing product names? (regardless of whether it was intentional in this case)

Excuse me while I look up the cast list of the next James Cameron movie.

<comment><USER4> The rate of people who would visit your new product and then immediately leave would be high. Generally, this is called bounce rate.

A few people might see your product and stick around, but I think that the brand confusion (and potential law suit) might be strong enough con's to negate these few users.

<comment><USER5> > _The rate of people who would visit your new product and then immediately > leave would be high. Generally, this is called bounce rate._

Would that be a bad thing? Even those that left would then know that your site existed, which isn't without value.

As far as names matching a character in a movie, I think it would be very difficult to make a suit out of this. If anything, you could then change your name slightly, and get some press about it.

<comment><USER6> They'd have a negative association with it, since the site didn't give them what they wanted. You don't want to start your first impression with a negative.

<comment><USER3> Possibly the majority of people would know what it was before clicking, because the search engine description would tell them. In that case they're just fulfilling their curiosity, which can only be good.

<comment><USER7> You'd be surprised how many people don't read the description in search results.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interestingly, a large chunk of the traffic comes from SF and the Bay Area. That leads me to believe that Quora is to a large extent a Bay Area echo- chamber.

<comment><USER9> That's the problem with Quora for me. When it first started to get big, I tried searching for things that weren't startup- or Silicon Valley-related, and the results were practically nonexistent. Maybe that's changed since then, but it didn't give me a good first impression. Not that there's anything wrong with a Q&A site for startups - that may well be a very good niche - but Quora clearly seems to want to be something more, and it seems that they're having a hard time breaking free.

<comment><USER10> This is slowly changing. For instance, see: <http://www.quora.com/Ashton- Kutcher>

<comment><USER11> Ha. I guess you don't realise he's on there because he's an investor in early tech companies in the Bay Area? And he's been there for ages.

<comment><USER10> I do know that. My point is that of his answers: Kutcher is a movie industry insider, and he responds to questions about the movie industry.

<comment><USER12> I found his content on quora hard to read because of the spelling mistakes and general lack of formatting (stream of thought style of writing does equate to easy to consume writing). And even though people had suggested edits, he never seemed to accept them/fold them back into his post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> TC pumped and dumped them. It will be interesting to see if they can stand on their own two feet but I doubt they will. The homepage is anti-new users, and if you register in spite of that you better subscribe to _popular_ topics or else you'll have no new content and no reason to come back.

<comment><USER14> I wonder how much of the new-user experience is to avoid an eternal september? Allowing people to easily sounds off on a few things and leave(like I'm doing right now) is not conducive to building a community.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Google Trends monitors search terms, not traffic. The Google Trends graph is relative to the total search volume for the keyword Quora.

Web traffic is a very different thing. It's how many people actually visit a site. Here's an estimate of Quora's traffic: <http://www.quantcast.com/Quora.com>

You can see that while they've experienced a significant peak in traffic that has resulted in a recent decrease, they're doing very well.

<comment><USER15> ^^^ I came here to say this. With that said, I'm a little sick of the quora hype. I have a love/hate relationship with the UI decisions they made. I haven't had a ton of luck with the questions I've asked on the site, but I have found it useful when researching existing (answered) questions. Although those questions tend to be very valley/startup centric.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I guess the hype is wearing off? It was bound to happen when it was evangelized like the second coming of christ by TechCrunch et al. I'm guessing that the vast majority of users is realizing that it's not much more than a new Q&A-site that was fortunate/skilled enough to get a lot of Silicon Valley elite on board as users at an early stage.

It will be interesting to watch Quora in the coming times, they're facing some of the same troubles as HN is facing: it gained popularity because the quality of content was high due to the contributors often being well-connected SV- elite. Now they're facing the backlash of popularity; low-quality content on both the Q and A side of the equation.

EDIT: Not to say that SV-elite means guaranteed quality content, but "they" provided(provides?) a lot of interesting insight on Quora.

</comment><comment><USER17> Generally, this is how most sites work. For each successive wave of popularity, they'll experience a spike followed by a decline, but the decline is to a higher level than it was pre-spike.

</comment><comment><USER18> Trends for Websites is much better for actual site traffic estimates.

[http://trends.google.com/websites?q=quora.com&geo=all...](http://trends.google.com/websites?q=quora.com&geo=all&date=ytd)

</comment><comment><USER19> Quantcast (<http://www.quantcast.com/quora.com>) and Compete (<http://siteanalytics.compete.com/quora.com/>) are better tools to measure traction. Looks like they've had a slight decline lately. With all the buzz they received early this year, I'm not surprised it's lower.

<comment><USER20> Respectfully disagree - Compete and Alexa both depend on toolbars, and no techie in his right mind wants to install such a thing. Quantcast doesn't use a toolbar, but it's heavily biased towards Quantcast-aware publishers who place the QC script on their pages. Long story short: these sites are bad for measuring traffic, but especially bad for measuring tech / power user / early adopter traffic.

<comment><USER19> Compete and Quantcast (if not "Quantified") are not good measurements of actual traffic estimates but they can usually report trends somewhat accurately. However, you make a great point about the tech/early adopter crowd which are the primary users for Quora.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> They're doing ok, probably just a mini-sharkfin from a wave of press. Interesting that HN is over half as big:

[http://trends.google.com/websites?q=quora.com,news.ycombinat...](http://trends.google.com/websites?q=quora.com,news.ycombinator.com&geo=all&date=all)

</comment><comment><USER22> That's based off search volume on the term isn't it? Meaning that there was a spike of new people hearing about the service. Just because the initial media attention has come off doesn't mean those attracted in the spike aren't still around.

</comment><comment><USER23> I find the Quora interface and usability to be kind of clunky and finicky. Their "walled garden" site rules are also a bit finicky. While it was interesting to poke around Quora a bit, I didn't perceive much value for myself.

</comment><comment><USER24> People realized it sucks :-) And Techcrunch that it's not worth to talk about it?

</comment><comment><USER25> Quora got a ton of press right around the end of the year - big articles in a lot of major press outlets. That likely accounts for at least some of the spike.

</comment><comment><USER26> I feel like on Quora the same 10 people are writing the majority of the content (and it is getting boring). Maybe I'm not using it appropriately, but if so their interface isn't helping me improve my experience.

</comment><comment><USER27> such peaks of brand interrest are quite common for new and hyped internet brands/startups. now comes the time of constant but slow(er) growth or failure.</comment>


A First: Organs Tailor-Made With Body's Own Cells - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/health/research/scientists-make-progress-in-tailor-made-organs.html?pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> People seem astonished that you can grow a new organ, and yet they grew them originally so you have an existence proof :-) The challenge is understanding literally _everything_ that is going on during that growth and what its role is. That is an analysis problem which is well suited to the techniques available to doctors.

Like a program, the rapidity of the improvement gets faster the more you know. Using stem cells as a proxy for how much we 'know' we went from 'harvesting' stem cells to 'making' stem cells. Lately I've read a number of interesting (if opaque :-) papers about various scaffolds for holding cells as they develop into tissue. The third piece of this puzzle will be the triggers (or you can think of it as the minimum scaffold) to evoke the organ you're looking for. This is simply analysis, ongoing, checking the boxes, we have working systems to compare against. Sure it needs the insights to 'connect the dots' but if you look at the puzzle long enough you figure it out.

So step back for a minute and think about what that will mean for health care costs. If we can replace organs at will for people, that is a much more cost effective treatment of heart disease, or diabetes, or gout. The trick will be insuring that those cost savings return to you and me and not to someone else.

<comment><USER3> I disagree with your last statement. Most current drug therapies are dirt cheap compared to the costs of organ implantation (even when you assume no long term care afterwards). This cost difference also makes me think insurance companies won't cover replacement organs when there is a normal treatment, thus keeping the current costs the same.

<comment><USER2> Would love to hear more about this. There are a couple of things, first we have to forward predict what an organ transplant will cost when things like flying a kidney in a helicopter from LA to SF is unnecessary. or the previous owner's body is maintained on life support. I've heard horror stories (but not seen the bills) for recipients being charged for that which grossly inflated the cost. So lets start with say 2 months of space in a tissue reactor to get the organ grown, and an 8hr surgical procedure, full team with 3 days postop care. For things like kidneys/spleens/bladders I would think it would be a lot less than say a heart or heart/lung transplant.

Then the second part is the costs associated with 'regular' care. So 10 years of dialysis + incidental infection care + machinery + visits is less expensive than the one day in the OR + 3 days post op?

I don't know, seems like a grown organ transplant should be less expensive, would love a heath care administrator to step in with some solid numbers.

Then

<comment><USER3> The organ failure scenarios you describe are the ideal case. If you look at the more common ailments like heart disease, diabetes, gout, or tooth decay. The equation changes in favor of the current treatments. You would be hard pressed to convence me that the cost of growing, and implanting, a new tooth would be lower than a conventional dental crown or implant.

I would love to be wrong. I would love to see the growth of spare parts reach mainstream use. But, I still believe their use will be artificially restricted, because of the cost of the skilled professionals involved and availability of proven alternatives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This hits a little too close to home.

I have GERD and daily I think about cancer, already I feel like I'm being strangled all the time. My doctor said it was a one in a million chance but constant irritation and a daily proton-pump inhibitor drug isn't my idea of being healthy.

Add to that my dad was diagnosed last January with IPF, an incurable progressive scarring of lung tissue, a cause of which is GERD; stomach acid splashes into lungs and over time can cause damage. Lung cancer seems like a walk in the park compared to IPF.

It would be fantastic if specific organs could be replaced it would solve my problem and for most diseases people develop other than entire body, systemic diseases or diseases of the brain.

</comment><comment><USER5> Consider me boggled.

How does the body "know" or get "told" to only manufacture wind pipe cells and not say grow a new toe?

Really impressive stuff.

<comment><USER6> In vivo, IIRC, there's a neighboring effect. If you take too lump of cells separated by a small space, they will grow and fill the gap will functioning specialized cells similar to the one in the lump. It only works for small distances. The scaffold might act as a structural guidance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _The work of these new body builders is far different from the efforts that produced artificial hearts decades ago. Those devices, which are still used temporarily by some patients awaiting transplants, are sophisticated machines, but in the end they are only that: machines._

What's wrong with those machines? They're off-the-shelf machines that can be manufactured in large number as necessary and they're subjects to engineering improvement over time.

<comment><USER8> The conventional Jarvis-style artificial heart also tries to imitate the functioning of a human heart, with distinct pumps making up a heartbeat. They tend to suffer from mechanical fatigue over time, though, because they have no mechanism for self-repair. There has, however, been some interesting artificial heart research that uses continuous-flow pumps that could conceivably work much better than the current generation of artificial hearts: [http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-02/no-pulse- how-d...](http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-02/no-pulse-how-doctors- reinvented-human-heart?page=all)

<comment><USER9> Dick Cheney has one.

<comment><USER8> Dick Cheney has half of one. He has a left-ventricular assist device, which has one pump, but still has a heart that does part of the work. The proposed devices in the PopSci article are two of those pumps together, replacing the heart's functions altogether. These have been implanted into cows and work fine, but haven't worked their way through the FDA yet for non-trial use in people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I remember the NOVA special on flushing pig organs of their cells, then seeding that scaffold with stem cells. It's good to see progress.</comment>


Stop using PDF and MS-Word Forms - <AUTHOR> http://manwithnoblog.com/2010/05/13/stop-using-pdf-and-ms-word-forms/ <comment><USER2> There are two different types of "PDF forms":

1) PDFs that you download, print out, fill in, and fax or scan+email back.

2) PDFs that have a form filling capability if you use a recent version of a PDF reader that supports it. I'm not entirely sure of the process or of how well it works, but I do know that the intention is that it does keep everything electronic.

I think that the author of the article isn't aware of the second type and commenters have conflated the two.</comment>


Cellphone searches upon arrest allowed by Canada's top court - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cellphone-searches-upon-arrest-allowed-by-canada-s-top-court-1.2869587

<comment><USER2> And what if I have an encrypted phone? Can I be compelled to turn over my password? Or my thumbprint? If I use the equivalent of a dead man's switch that wipes my phone if law enforcement tries unsuccessfully to get in, what then?

There may be case law that covers this, but I am genuinely curious.

<comment><USER3> I can't speak for Canada, but in the US, if a judge orders you to provide a password, you have no choice. If you don't hand it over, this will result in you living broke forever in a prison—and you got your due process.

<comment><USER4> That's overly reductionist. [http://federalevidence.com/pdf/EvidViewPoints/aug.2012.EVP-K...](http://federalevidence.com/pdf/EvidViewPoints/aug.2012.EVP- Kaufman.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The HN title matches the article title, but it's somewhat misleading. The court actually ruled that the particular case before it was _not_ a legal search, and that cellphone searches are only allowed under specific circumstances.

It looks to me as though the circumstances are a bit too broad, but it's not as though Canadian police will suddenly be allowed to search the cellphones of everyone they arrest.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's a win/lose for privacy in Canada.

Obviously, giving officers the ability to search phones without a warrant is a bit troubling. However, the Supreme Court has made it abundantly clear that phones without pass-codes still contain intensely private information, and thus are still subject to privacy implications. It's just unfortunate that this bit narrowly passed. (4-3)

> An individual's decision not to password protect his or her cell phone does > not indicate any sort of abandonment of the significant privacy interests > one generally will have in the contents of the phone. Cell phones – locked > or unlocked – engage significant privacy interests. \- The majority ruling's > statement[0]

[0] [http://www.michaelgeist.ca/2014/12/supreme-courts-privacy- st...](http://www.michaelgeist.ca/2014/12/supreme-courts-privacy-streak-comes- end-split-court-affirms-legality-warrantless-phone-searches-incident-arrest/)

</comment><comment><USER7> > _The Supreme Court of Canada says law enforcement officials can go through > the cellphone of someone under arrest as long as the search relates directly > to the arrest and police keep detailed notes._

Fair enough. Now how do they plan on enforcing these rules?

<comment><USER8> It's a problem all right, because the police could arrest someone for littering, find evidence of drug dealing in a phone, and then retroactively claim some suspicion of the latter in order to justify more severe charges.

The technical approach to this would be to clone some existing version control system and have a country's court system run its own equivalent of GitHub, so that police could submit crimes and evidence as they are investigated/discovered but not monkey about with their own records. Of course such a system would not be cost-free, and it would still be open to abuses from both sides.

<comment><USER9> The version control system you describe was originally designed for text-based code, and would probably impose significant time costs on the officers, and delays on the suspects. Police cameras, which could be required to be turned on at any stop, or before any search/arrest would provide the same information (if the officers were required to state their cause aloud). The cameras could even be set to save 5, 10, or 15 minutes of footage before 'activated', so that the police would not be able to claim they 'were in a rush'. This system could also be automatically activated by a gunshot or other sound.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If law enforcement has sufficient cause to arrest someone, then getting a search warrant after the arrest should be easy.

If it wasn't easy to obtain such warrants then either _that_ aspect of judiciary or policy needed changing, or else it wasn't easy for a good reason!

This decision does not address (or change) whether one can be compelled to reveal a password-locked phone in Canada. At least one Canadian Civil Liberties Association suggests this decision this raises more questions than it answers. [https://twitter.com/bccla/status/543124869240471552](https://twitter.com/bccla/status/543124869240471552)</comment>


General principles for good URI design for RESTful and HTTP applications - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1619152/how-to-create-rest-urls-without-verbs/1619677#1619677

<comment><USER2> "(Note: I did not say "RESTful URI design"; URIs are essentially opaque in REST.)"

Glad to see that - I'm seriously puzzled by the number of references I see to "RESTful URIs".

<comment><USER3> If that is true, why do so many guides stress URI design?

The canonical example is the "collection" URI,

        http://example.com/resources/

And the "element" URI,

        http://example.com/resources/item17

Would anybody balk if all my REST API's URIs where obscure hashes?

So my collection is now,

        http://example.com/b9cbc0a72a17e6b9e271187096c3b981269554fb

And the element is,

        http://example.com/7c2186f626d0aa7dedc0bb7537b578937015ff6e

Is this no worse or better?

<comment><USER4> The difference is people who's goal is to follow some pure, academic definition of REST and people who want to make elegant web services. So,

Pedantic wanks "no worse".

People working in reality "wtf would you ever do that?"

<comment><USER5> What a strawman. Just because URI layout is orthogonal to REST does not make it a non-concern to REST proponents. It has nothing to do with REST. It is a good practice. Both are true.

It's only confusing if you think REST nebulously means merely "good web API design" or "good usage of HTTP."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> All this is nice and well, but how would one build an "unsubscribe" link into a newsletter system without a GET request changing the state of the resource (i.e. deleting the email address from the active recipients table by just clicking a link)?

Would this be the exception to the rule or is this problem totally unrelated to REST?

BTW: I'm not debating, I really wanna know.

<comment><USER7> These are guidelines and not unbreakable rules. I think it's fine to have unsubscribe link change the state of the resource. [And personally, I would only flag the user for not sending emails, not delete his email altogether.]

<comment><USER6> > [And personally, I would only flag the user for not sending emails, not > delete his email altogether.]

Sure, just wanted to make my point. In reality you move the subscriber from "subscribed" to "unsuscribed" or something like this...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _"Don't use query parameters to alter state" "Don't fall into RPC with your URIs"_

I can see the benefit of doing some of the things on the list, but I never understood what's the motivation behind these two suggestions. What are the practical benefits? (Specifically, what are the benefits for a _web application_ , rather than a web app?)

I can give you some _considerable_ benefits of doing the opposite. My favorite URL scheme looks like this: "[http://example.com/?Class.method.id.parts&param=x](http://example.com/?Class.method.id.parts&param=x).

It enables automatic routing without the need to write explicit, case-by-case routing logic or .htaccess files. It doesn't mess up the base path, so I don't need to do some magic when writing URLs. Moreover, it's _straightforward_. It's easy to see what's going on on the web pages, in the code and in the logs, because knowing a URL means immediately knowing which controller and action are involved (which is not the case with clever resource-mapping schemes).

<comment><USER9> I think the most important part is whether you are respecting the semantics of the HTTP methods or not. A GET request should _never_ delete something just because the URL says "method=delete".

<comment><USER10> > A GET request should never delete something just because the URL says > "method=delete".

More generally, a GET _must not_ alter application state. It can change a cache or a logfile (these are either implementation detail or irrelevant), but if there is any way for the user to see what was changed, then it does not belong in a GET[0].

[0] things like consumption quotas management are of course a different matter, but they're meta-data more than application state.

<comment><USER11> Except, as stated in a different comment, for things such as "unsubscribe" links.

<comment><USER10> No, I do not agree.

1\. In a browser, the link would lead to a confirmation page POSTed to the server

2\. In an API, there's no real sense in doing that, but it'd probably be a DELETE on the subscription resource.

<comment><USER11> What about from an email?

<comment><USER9> The link takes you to a page with a form where you can confirm by POSTing (to the user: submitting).

<comment><USER11> Hmm that could work for an unsubscribe page, since the user is motivated to make the second click. However, for an email with a sign up link or a subscription confirmation link having an extra step could reduce your conversion rate somewhat.

<comment><USER12> but OTOH semantics of GET allow e-mail servers to implement a link scanner that e.g. checks all linked pages for phishing.

That breaks (and likely is broken already in practice) when pages don't respect semantics of GET and unsubscribe/verify, etc. when page is merely displayed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> In this same vein, I am curious what you guys think of using semi-colon and comma characters in URLs when pointing at an endpoint that generates a response that would typically be provided by a query string, e.g.:

        http://site.com/generate;lang=en,size=32,weight=78

RESTful Web Services Cookbook[1] gave me the idea (a fantastic book) and what I like about it, is that interstitial proxy software seems to molest the URL less where as some refuse to pass through query string params for some reason (e.g. CloudFront).

Anyone see any glaring issues with this?

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/RESTful-Web-Services-Cookbook- Scalabil...](http://www.amazon.com/RESTful-Web-Services-Cookbook- Scalability/dp/0596801688/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1328307149&sr=8-1)

</comment><comment><USER14> My first thought was "maybe we should back up and emphasize that resources are nouns before going further", but if you scroll up you'll see that this was actually the original question asked (how do I avoid naming them with verbs?).

<comment><USER15> Which reminds me: [http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/execution-in- kingdom...](http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/execution-in-kingdom-of- nouns.html)

I quote it, because it resonates with a lot of people. Especially those who abhor the factoryfactories. Why are the nouns undisputed when it comes to REST? It might map to the web, but does it map well to computing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This article on how to design a RESTful API is really great: [http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/webservices/library/ws- res...](http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/webservices/library/ws-restful/)

</comment><comment><USER17> Holy shit, why hasn't this been around forever?

I forgot about 2?? responses other than 200, going to implement that now. Also going to implement 418 just because it's fun.</comment>


Do we deploy too often? - <AUTHOR> http://codeweavers.net/do-we-deploy-too-often/

<comment><USER2> There are a few good reasons to deploy this often:

1\. You get paid per deploy

2\. You want to get on the front page of Hacker News

3\. Your software is riddled with fatal errors and things are escalating. Your customers are getting more and more angry. They are threatening your helpdesk staff. They are starting a class action against your company. Your family is held hostage by one of them.</comment>


Yafe – Yet Another Fractal Explorer [2011] - <AUTHOR> https://swapped.cc/yafe <comment><AUTHOR> Since we are now showing our "Yet Another ..." projects, here's a small weekend project from ~10 years ago.

Make sure to right-click and switch to Lyapunov fractal, because that's ultimately what Yafe is all about, e.g.

[https://swapped.cc/content/yafe/img/lyapunov-2048-bw.png](https://swapped.cc/content/yafe/img/lyapunov-2048-bw.png)

Source is over at Github - [https://github.com/apankrat/yafe](https://github.com/apankrat/yafe)</comment>


List of prohibited usernames and subdomains? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
For my SAAS application, I allow people to register a subdomain as well as a username.
I'm building a list of prohibited names:
subdomains: www www2 admin mail
usernames: admin root administrator postmaster
any other suggestions? <comment><USER2> Usernames:

hostmaster webmaster filemaster (anything ending ...master really) abuse ssl

Subdomains:

ftp smtp pop (everything listed in /etc/services) (anything related to your naming/branding) (country codes)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah nice one about the /etc/services I guess most of /etc/passwd should also be prohibited</comment></comment>


CBDC: Considerations for the Digital Euro - <AUTHOR> At a moment in time when we see major upheaval in the world around us, we are reminded that technology, innovation, and progress are what characterise the modern economy. Whether for finding solutions to complex problems or improving outdated aspects of our lives and society, we are always looking at what is next to keep evolving and improving. At dGen, we have just released our latest report. It examines the various considerations that need to be taken into account when thinking about launching a new Central Bank Digital Currency. In this report, we examine the potential next step for one of the pillars of our economy — money itself. Central Bank Digital Currencies or CBDCs are a hot topic in reserve banks across the world. Around 80% of world banks are at least exploring the idea. A CBDC could be the next innovation in money and nobody wants to miss the boat. Two events seem to have triggered much wider interest in the topic. The first being the announcement of Facebook's Libra and other private stablecoins, which could one day be seen as a rival to reserve currencies; these were met with disdain from regulators far and wide. The second event was the announcement of the DCEP, or digital Yuan, that the Chinese Government is working on. Both of these likely led to heightened interest in the topic, as Western governments try to avoid any encroachment from other currency contenders. It is not all smooth sailing for CBDCs, however. There are many technological, societal, and budgetary factors to overcome before a CBDC will rival a major currency. But there does seem to be a desire to explore and find solutions to this set of problems. At dGen, we have focused on a case for the 'Digital Euro'. Looking at the unique construct of the Eurozone, which presents its own nuanced challenges. We always try to think about how this could impact EU citizens and not just the underlying economy. <comment><USER2> What is the difference between a digital euro and a debit card?

</comment><comment><USER3> We have been running a digital EUR for a years... useful for quick payments and settlement especially for fx...</comment>


Ask HN: Inmigrate to USA, form LLC and work for myself? - <AUTHOR>

Hi HNers, sadly this third world country is going, I was wondering if this is feasible,
I need your input, ideas, tips, connections:
Here are the steps I have thought so far:
1.- Incorporate: Create a LLC in some state in the USA (Delaware, Nevada, etc)
2.- Give myself EIN, SSN, USA Bank Account, etc
3.- Hire myself
4.- Move to USA
5.- Work in the USA
Thanks <comment><USER2> It's potentially feasible under an E-2 Visa. Your case may be fact dependent. Here's some info> [http://www.visapro.com/Immigration- Articles/?a=361&z=48](http://www.visapro.com/Immigration-Articles/?a=361&z=48)

</comment><comment><USER3> 1\. You can incorporate an LLC or Inc. from any part of the world. This won't be an issue.

2\. The LLC or Inc. can get EIN and open USA Bank Account. You'll not have an SSN unless you have a valid work visa, students visa or your green card. Not a log of banks will help you open these kind of accounts unless you have someone with SSN to help you there. Most startup-friendly bank is SV Bank.

3\. You won't be able to hire yourself unless the company is one year old and has certain revenue. Even when the company is eligible for everything else, it'll still have to file an H1-B which is more like lottery these days. 2014 quotas are already full and 2015 quotas will only open in April 2015.

4\. and 5. Unless you have an H1-B or L1, you won't be able to move to the States for work.

There's something called EB-5 but that has substantial investment.

</comment><comment><USER4> Form an LLC with your friends in the US (who are legal residents). Make sure that you form a board which has the authority to fire you (this is needed for the h1b employee employer requirement). Make the company profitable, apply for h1, move.

</comment><comment><USER5> Step #3 is the hardest. You're not going to be able to hire yourself and get a visa for yourself as an employee for your own company, except under very specific circumstances which probably don't apply here.

</comment><comment><USER6> Which "third-world" country are you in?

If it is that bad, like civil-war-bad, then you could possibly try applying for refugee status (although that may restrict you as well).

<comment><AUTHOR> Mexico, the country where the president couldn't even mention reading 3 books. And the preference polls being a candidate where way way off... Corruption and crime runs rampant.

It was already pretty hard in here, many new laws hampering growth, way too much corruption, poverty, and desperation. You can see it on their faces.

My family suffers...

<comment><USER7> If you have a college degree and work in certain professions then there is a separate visa process for Mexican citizens. You will need to get a job offer from a US company like an H1-B but if I recall unlike the H1B there is no limit to the number of visas issued.

[http://travel.state.gov/content/visas/english/employment/naf...](http://travel.state.gov/content/visas/english/employment/nafta.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Quite difficult unless you have a substantial amount of money to invest. May have better luck getting a work visa.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm fairly sure that won't work.

</comment><comment><USER10> Which country are you from?

</comment><comment><USER11> Not likely... The process of sponsoring a visa applicant can be costly and must be completed by a us citizen. There are significant cost to this as well. If they find out, you will be blacklisted and never gain citizenship</comment>